The Lazarus Project

by Aleksandar Hemon

  The possibility of cancerous demise made him only more awe-some and redoubtable to her, his petty patriarchal cruelties now forgivable. At family dinners he would push a pea around his plate ponderously, while we waited in solidary silence for the death thought to pass. Even though the therapy was reportedly successful, the stench of fermented piss reminded us that his dying had accelerated and that he was headed for oblivion. I suppose part of me had wished him dead, and now I gave it away—“How is your dead?”

  I may have just done serious damage to my marriage, I said to Rora later on, while we drank the hundredth coffee of the day at the Viennese Café. You’ve never been married, so you don’t know, but it is a fragile thing. Nothing ever goes away, everything stays inside it. It is a different reality.

  Rora sipped his coffee. His Canon was in his lap, his left hand on it, his index finger on the shoot button, as if waiting for the right moment to photograph me.

  Let me tell you a joke, Rora said. I was about to object, but it seemed that he wanted to cheer me up, so I let him try.

  Mujo and his wife, Fata, are in bed. It’s late at night. Mujo is falling asleep, and Fata is watching porn: a horny couple, all silicone and tattoos, is sucking and fucking like there is no tomorrow. Mujo says, C’mon, Fata, turn that off, let’s go to sleep. And Fata says, Let me just see if these kids are going to get married in the end.

  Ah, Rora. He was becoming one of the many people who suffered from a surfeit of good intentions.

  Stepping off the Halsted streetcar into the ankle-deep mud, Olga loses her other heel. The crowd pushes her forward, their hands and arms brushing against her; there is no way of retrieving it out of the mush. Another loss, she thinks. The more you lose, the more is to be lost, yet it matters less. The shoes have long been caked in mud and filth, the soles long soaked, her feet wet for days. She worked many fifteen-hour days to save money for these shoes, but now they are decrepit already, the seams unraveling, the laces snapping. She could slip out of her shoes and leave them right here, stuck in the muck, and then get rid of her dress and everything else: her mind, her life, her pain. The abandon of having nothing to lose, the freedom of being divested of all earthly burdens, ready for the Messiah, or death. Everything is attracted by its end.

  The end of the world might be near, Isador said to her once, but we don’t have to rush to reach it. We might as well just stroll over, have some candy on the way. But her legs are too weary and sore; still in her shoes, she keeps walking down 12th Street, turns toward Maxwell. It has warmed up; the sun is out and the rag sellers exude vapor, as though the spirits were deserting them. At their feet, mangy dogs are basking. There seem to be more people here than before, taking up more space. Where did they all come from? The city has become smaller; the sidewalks are dense with bodies squeezing between pushcarts and horse carriages, milling meaninglessly, in no hurry to get anywhere. The men’s clothes enfold the winter dampness; they pull their hats down to their eyes, for it has been a long time since they’ve seen the sun. The women take off their gloves to touch the rags; their cheeks are still red from frostbite; they bargain tenaciously. Every one of them is somebody’s brother or sister or child; all of them are alive; they know the good ways of not dying. A horse is neighing; the hawkers are hollering over everybody’s heads as though casting a net, offering cheap things: socks, rags, hats, life. A short-haired young woman is handing out leaflets, yelling hoarsely: “No tsar, no king, no president—what we want is freedom!” Here and there a child is squirming through the forest of legs. There is a disorderly, testy line outside Jacob Shapiro’s store. A blind man is facing it, singing a plaintive song, his eyes milky, his hand on the shoulder of a boy, who is holding out a cap for nickels. The man’s voice is unfaltering in its sorrow, everything is awash with it as in sunlight. A pervasive stench of unfresh fish is advancing from the obscure stalls. In front of Menduk’s store a boy is selling the Hebrew Voice, shouting alternately in Yiddish and English. As she’s passing near him, he shouts out: “Lazarus Averbuch was degenerate assassin, not Jew!” Does he recognize her? Did they put her picture in the papers? Is he yelling after her? She turns around to look at him, at his capacious hat and snotty snout and pointed, nasty chin, but he does not return her blistering gaze. “Jews must join Christians in war against anarchism!” She wants to slap him, to beat some color into his pallid cheeks, to twist his ears until he screams for mercy.

  Two policemen in dark uniforms are coming down the street, their shadows stretching before them, the crowd parting, the young woman with leaflets quickly vanishing. One of them is twirling his baton; his hand is large, his fingers knuckly; a large gun is holstered at his waist. His face is wide and square, the nose flattened from some fight; he does not glance at the people on the street—he might as well be walking between tombstones. The other policeman is young; his mustache too kempt, his uniform buttons too shiny. Yet he shares in the exudation of power; his thumb is stuck in his belt and he scans the crowd as though from afar, seeing no single face. Olga has a clear vision of the young politsyant falling to the ground, facing the sky, her foot on his chest while she swings the baton to smash the bridge of his nose; the stream of blood parts to run down each cheek, soaking the vontses. She would beat the other politsyant across his large, meaty, bovine ears until they turn to bloody cauliflower. The police walk by her; they are so tall that their badges blaze at her at eye level. She would hit their knees until they collapse and then gouge their eyes out. “Deranged woman mauls policemen to death!” the boy would yell. He would surely recognize her next time.

  She shoulders her way through the crowd, toward a clear patch where they won’t rub against her; they part obligingly before she even touches them, as though her anger were sending ripples ahead of her. She wants to howl with rage at their complaisance, but nobody would hear her; here, noise is like air, everywhere and necessary.

  Dear Mother,

  You will think me cruel and mad, but I cannot keep this inside me anymore. Lazarus has been slain like an animal for no reason at all and yet they call him an assassin. He—an assassin. There is no end to evil, it reaches us here too.

  Suddenly, the path through the crowd has closed off. In front of Olga there stands a small woman in a dirty white dress and mushroomlike hat, her eyes febrile. The woman’s mouth is agape, and it is unclear to Olga whether she is attempting to smile or if it is just that her gums and teeth are too painful, for the cavity looks pustulous, her breath reeking of cadaver. Olga tries to get around her, but the woman steps in front of her, staring through Olga’s face. She speaks with a voice between a hiss and a whisper: “He whom you love is ill.”

  Olga elbows her aside, but the woman clutches her sleeve and pulls her back. “But this illness is not unto death. It is for the glory of God, so that the son of God may be glorified.” The hiss has gone beyond whisper and turned into wailing. Olga is pulling forward but the woman is not letting go of her. “Leave me alone,” Olga growls. The woman has only lower teeth, her tongue lapping at the upper gums. “Unbind him,” the woman caterwauls. “Unbind him and let him go.” Olga rips her arm out of the woman’s grasp and hurries forward. The crowd has slowed down, some men have stopped and are now watching them, already beginning to form a circle. The woman, now fully gibbering, grabs Olga’s hair and tugs it back. With a rapid turn, Olga smacks the woman with the back of her hand; she feels her knuckles bounce off the woman’s cheek-bone, her skin breaking. The woman stops, lets go of her hair, looks astounded. “Your brother will rise,” she says perfectly calmly, as if all misunderstanding has now been resolved. “Lazarus shall rise. Our Lord will be with us.”

  AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS, the politsyant is rocking on the hind legs of his chair, a grotesquely gigantic cigar in his hand. “Nice to see your pretty face again, Miss Averbuch,” he says, grinning. “Happy to report everything is just the way you left it.” She walks by him without a word. A white cross is chalked on her door; she wipes it with her hand, puts the key i
n, but the door is unlocked. Maybe Isador has left, somehow getting past this shmegege. It is a miracle they have not found him yet. Lord, why did you leave me in these woods?

  “All kinds of Jews have been visiting your neighbor, Miss Averbuch. Many long beards. For all I know, they were plotting new crimes with the Lubels and such. If it was for me, I would drown you all in the lake, like rats, all of yous. But you Jews have important friends everywhere, don’t you, so we have to be nice to you all of a sudden. Don’t you worry, though. Do not you worry. The time shall come.”

  The fury forms a sentence in her head and she turns to deliver it, but it falls apart as the Lubels’ door opens and five men in black coats come out. Olga recognizes Rabbi Klopstock, his long beard. He averts his eyes from Olga as they file down the stairs. Nobody has come to see her; nobody wants to be close to her. Rabbi Klopstock hurries past the policeman, followed by the other men, whom she does not recognize. None of the men have beards; they wear American attire, clutching bowler hats much like Taube’s.

  “See? I told you,” cackles the politsyant, munching the cigar. He stops rocking; the front legs of the chair hit the floor; he sits up to watch the Jews filing downstairs. “They don’t like you much, do they?” She would like to kick this shvants off the chair and push those bowler-hatted bastards down the stairs so they can pile up on top of the good rebbe. May they never become who they want to be. May they be pickled in pain and humiliation. Her feet are hurting, her legs shaking with fatigue; she would like to sit down or stretch in bed. Instead, she goes to the Lubels.

  The small room smells of camphor; a pot is steaming on the stove. Pinya is weeping over it, as though she were boiling her tears. Isaac is in bed; his swollen, bluish feet are sticking out from under the blanket, at the other end of which his sallow face is flinching in pain, blood bubbling up on his lips. Zosya and Avram are sitting on the bed by his side. They are sucking on candy, the paper bag in Avram’s hand, Zosya staring at it voraciously. Isaac does not seem to be aware of them; his eyes widen, now and then, as he grunts. It has been a long time since Olga was here; everything seems to be different. The politsey ransacked the Lubels’ home, but their few possessions are all in the same place: the shelf with plates and cups; the rack for the pots and pans; a little stack of books in the corner; the uncovered mirror. Olga’s previous life was a hallucination, everything before Lazarus’s death was khaloymes . Here now is a true reality.

  There is just enough space between the bed and the stove for Pinya and Olga to stand awkwardly close to each other. Pinya’s eyes are at the center of dark stains, as though they were leaking ink.

  They broke his ribs, Pinya says, whimpering. And something else inside. They beat him and beat him. They took him away last night, beat him through the morning, returned him unconscious. They beat him all night. I think they simply like beating him. They asked him about Isador. They claim he knew something about anarchists and Lazarus. I don’t know what. I don’t know what I am going to do if he goes. Who is going to feed these children? They are always hungry.

  She wipes her nose with a piece of undergarment, whereupon she drops it in the pot; she is boiling laundry in it. Her nostrils are thick and red; a bead of sweat is rolling down from her temple.

  Dr. Gruzenberg thinks his kidney has been detached, Pinya says. Rebbe Klopstock is going to send a letter to the authorities.

  Olga snorts with contempt, and Pinya nods in agreement. Isaac is not aware of anyone in the room: his eyes dart in different directions, as though he were following his kidney shuttling between different areas of his body. He seems to be surprised by every one of his short breaths. Lord, Olga thinks. That’s me.

  It never ends, Pinya says. Every time, you think maybe this here is a different world, but it’s all the same: they live, we die. So here it is again.

  Olga embraces her. But Pinya is even taller now, so Olga has to press her cheek against her chest. She hears the heart booming steadily, indifferent to their shared sobs, to Isaac gasping for life.

  Naturally, the ten-o’clock bus to Chisinau did not show up. Nobody said or knew anything; Rora and I just waited with everyone else for a couple of flaccid hours, and then the twelve-o’clock bus showed up. If you wait long enough, something will happen—there has never been a time when nothing happened.

  At one o’clock, the twelve o’clock bus was still in the station, and I was blaming the wait and the heat on my fellow travelers: they stank, they were ugly, they were pissed and passive, I hated them. Rora, on the other hand, wandered around, photographing. He seemed at home in the uncertainty of the moment, in the mayhem of waiting for something to happen. Every once in a while he would come back and ask if I needed anything, the main purpose being, I suspect, to display his superiority in the situation. I needed everything—a shower, water, to shit, comfort, love, to reach the end of this lousy journey, to write a book. I need nothing, I snapped. He snapped back at me, a close close-up.

  The birch branches beyond the bus lot slumped down forlorn; against the revving of the engines, birds twittered chokingly; the garbage container was bubbling up with moist plastic bags. How the fuck did I get here, to southwestern Ukraine, to the land of the pissed and passive, so far from everything—anything—I loved?

  Lazarus, on the train from Vienna to Trieste: third class was full of emigrants, whole families sitting on their valises, imagining an incomprehensible future; men slept on luggage racks. In Lazarus’s compartment, three Bohemians played cards for money; one of them seemed to be losing a lot—it didn’t look like he would ever make it to the ship. Lazarus was sweating but did not want to take his coat off; he kept his arms crossed to protect the money in his inside pocket. Landscapes blurred by; the windows were smudged with the yolk of the setting sun. Everybody knew the name of their crossing ship. Lazarus’s was Francesca; he imagined her long and wide and graceful, smelling of salt, sun, and gulls. Francesca was a beautiful name. He did not know anybody named Francesca.

  It was horribly hot: my shoe soles stuck to the pavement; I had new life-forms developing in my armpits. My Samsonite suitcase looked ridiculously out of place amidst buckets and boxes and checkered-nylon tote bags turgid with cheap stuff. Apparently everyone in Eastern Europe, including my country, received one of those bags in compensation for the abolition of social infrastructure. I was as conspicuous as an iceberg in a pool. I had no doubt that gangs of thieves had already congregated to plan the filching of my possessions. And where was Rora?

  Well, he was right there, snapping pictures of me when I was not looking. Stay here, I growled, and watch my suitcase. Stay he did, lighting up a cigarette, smiling at the bucket baba, then photographing her as she crumpled her face in a spectacular scowl. I pushed through the crowd, they pushed in return; I bought a Bounty chocolate bar, then threw it away because it was liquid; I was wary of these people, these foreigners; I pushed through the crowd on my way back.

  Everybody imagines that they have a center, the seat of their soul, if you believe in that kind of thing. I’ve asked around, and most of the people told me that the soul is somewhere in the abdominal area—a foot or so above the asshole. But even if the center is elsewhere in the body—the head, the throat, the heart—it is fixed there, it does not move around. When you move, the center moves with you, following your trajectory. You protect that center, your body is a sheath; and if your body is damaged, the center is exposed and weak. Moving through the crowd at the bus station in Chernivtsi, I realized that my center had shifted—it used to be in my stomach, but now it was in my breast pocket, where I kept my American passport and a wad of cash. I pushed this bounty of American life through space; I was presently assembled around it and needed to protect it from the people around me.

  It was well past one o’clock; we had no idea when the bus would leave, but I thought it would be prudent for us to take our seats, given that ticketless people were swarming around the door and arguing with the driver. The bus was at least thirty years old, built be
fore the advent of airflow, hot as a furnace; Rora took the seat by the window so he could take more pictures, forcing me into the olfactory inspection of every passing armpit. I would not have minded abandoning him here; I could go alone now; I was alone anyway. I could laugh at myself (ha-ha, ha ha ha ha!) for being stupid enough to ever embark upon a journey with this two-bit gambler and ex-gigolo, this wannabe war veteran, this Bosnian nobody. I watched him raise his Canon to point it through the window at some helpless tote-bag carrier. The seat of his fucking soul was that camera.

  The driver looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks; he smoked as though possessed, his hands trembled. A teenage boy who clearly had not yet experienced the manly pleasure of shaving appeared to be his copilot: he checked the tickets and helped the advancing peasants with their buckets and baskets. He had the calm demeanor of a man in charge, of someone enjoying his own exertions of power. He yelled at an old man carrying a sack bulging with what turned out to be shoes, for the man took out a black high-heel shoe and shoved it in the boy’s face to prove some point.